


The Impossible Dream

by Stephquiem



Series: Going Back [1]
Category: Animorphs (TV), Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fix-It, Gen, Self-Insert, Sort Of, The fix-it part of the plot is really more like a sub-plot tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 23:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14224080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stephquiem/pseuds/Stephquiem
Summary: This is what happens when a self-insert fanfic becomes self aware, and subsequently goes catastrophically wrong. Or: why you should never trust trans-dimensional aliens.Takes place during #9 The Secret.





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was eleven, I wrote a fanfic where some of my friends/classmates and I became Animorphs. I don't remember much of it, except that I wrote about the Animorphs moving in with the Hork-Bajir at least a year before it happened. Oh, and that it was bad. Really bad. The only things worth saving from it were a couple of OCs, who were thankfully not based on any real people.
> 
> But somehow my itch to write myself into Animorphs hasn't died over the last 18 years. "Going Back" started as a post-54 "I don't like how the series ended, I'm going to fix it" kind of deal and turned into... I'm not really sure. What and how much gets "fixed" (or, more accurately, changed) isn't really the focus anymore. Also, I'm writing a version of myself from 16 years ago, and I feel like we're really stretching the meaning of "self-insert" here. Though it's nice to get to justify things with "Yeah, that's totally something I would do" or "Yes, yes I am that dumb." The author-insert is a time honored tradition. By which I mean I recently reread my copy of "Sideways Stories from Wayside School" and if it's good enough for Louis Sachar, it's good enough for me.
> 
> GB!Steph is directly referencing Man of La Mancha here, because why the hell not. We're also calling her that to differentiate our protagonist from our author, because if you think I'm going to come up with another name, you've got another think coming. I mean, this is called Going Back because I thought it sounded good at fourteen or something, and I really hate naming things. Honestly, the fact that what eventually coalesced into Going Back went like three years without a title is the least surprising thing about this whole endeavor.

Be careful what you wish for.

People say that all the time, right? Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. It's good advice, probably. You never have all the facts--that's just the nature of the universe. Or, at least, it's the nature of  _this_ universe. Maybe all universes, I don't know. The point is, you can never truly know what you're getting yourself into, because I think the very nature of wishes--as opposed to more concrete ambitions or more malleable hopes--is that they're the unattainable. The impossible dream is impossible because what you're reaching for doesn't exist. It's just smoke and air. Or paper and ink, I guess.

Like a lot people I knew growing up, I read  _Animorphs_ and thought about how cool it would be to be able to turn into animals. Right? How cool would it be to turn into a bird, or a dog or a horse? To experience the world from that perspective for awhile. To escape my day-to-day for awhile and become something else. What teenager doesn't wish they were something or someone else sometimes? What teenager wouldn't want to be a superhero?

Probably the kind of teenagers who don't follow alien gods into alternate universes because they want to be a hero. Or because they like being made to feel like they know everything. There's a kind of narcissistic pleasure in being told that yes, you're right.

Have you ever loved something--a book, a tv show, a person--so much, invested so much time into it, that you don't want it to end? And then it when it  _does_ end, you feel like you've been cheated out of something? Maybe it didn't end the way you wanted it to. Maybe it ended too soon. Maybe it ended too late. If someone came and told you that you could fix it, all of it, so that it was just the way you wanted it, wouldn't you at least consider it? Who could be better equipped for the job, right?

I assume everyone better equipped than me for _this_ particular job was busy. Or smart enough to say no.


	2. Rules

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter technically takes place in July 2001. For context, I finished #54 on May 20, 2001. 
> 
> I would like to dedicate this chapter to younger!me's obsessive need to document every little thing in my diary. Knew it'd come in handy someday.

Middle school is a weird time.

I don't think anyone gets out of it unscathed. If it's not your hormones screwing with your brain, it's the other hormonal twelve year olds you see everyday, all stuck together in one building for seven hours a day. Honestly, it's little wonder any of us make it out with our sanity.

Everybody seems to go through it, but when you're a kid and it's happening, it feels like the whole world's against you and no one understands what you're going through.

I'm not saying I did what I did because I was bullied or because of a fit of teen angst. Mostly because that's too embarrassing to admit.

It was summer. The greatest dramas of my life at the moment were the simple ones--the family cat had just died. My sister's on-again, off-again relationship was on-again, with a guy who had the same name as the cat. It had led to a couple awkward moments when we told people we'd buried "Joey" in the backyard.

I was spending my summer at the library, or, barring that, moping around the house. It doesn't really matter what I was moping about. It didn't still matter after the fact. It might have been a boy--remember, all of those hormones--or it might have been that our internet connection was always pretty nebulous. Or it might have just been because "peace" and "quiet" were completely foreign concepts that summer.

The basement of my family's house was being finished--we were trading grey concrete for carpet and drywall, that weird, old musty smell for the smell of fresh paint, and disorganized chaos for... well,  _still_ disorganized chaos, but now we'd have a storage room to shove all our junk into. You could hear hammering and drilling from basically dawn 'til dusk, no matter where you were in the house. 

I was just minding my own business when it started. I had draped myself across my bed with a book, doing my best to tune out the cacophony of construction and whatever was playing on the radio--the volume turned up as high as it'd go to be heard above the hammering. You can get used to anything, it turns out, even ear-splitting noise.

Still, when all that noise suddenly _stops,_ you can't really help but  _notice._

Everything stopped. Abruptly. Like someone had pulled the plug on everything. I paused in the act of turning a page, cocking my head to one side. Something else was missing. It wasn't _just_ the sudden absence of construction noise and top forty music. I couldn't put my finger on it exactly, but something about it bothered me enough to slide off my bed and make my way to my door. 

I poked my head out into the hallway. My bedroom was directly across from the stairs, and I had a reasonably good view of the living room from this angle. I couldn't see anyone, so I started to call out, but then stopped myself, feeling stupid. I'd get someone's attention and then what? I'd tell them that the noise stopped and I got worried? Yeah. Even I could see how dumb that sounded.

Shaking my head, I stepped back into my bedroom, closing the door. As I settled back on my bed and picked up my book again, I realized what was missing. When you shut off music or a television or whatever, it's not instantaneous. There's an echo-y vibration left over, or that little  _woosh_ noise as the picture blinks out. It's the sort of thing you don't even really think about. 

I had just found my page again when--

**DO NOT BE AFRAID.**

"AHHH!"

The voice--if you could even call it that--appeared in my head suddenly. Like an intrusive thought, unexpected and unwanted, except it wasn't my own internal voice I was hearing.

I was on my knees on the floor without really knowing how I got there. My legs stung like I'd fallen. I thought, for a moment of those stories you hear about people having divine visions, of suddenly hearing God's voice in your head. 

**NOT QUITE.**

I swear he sounded amused.

My bedroom looked exactly the same as it always did. Early afternoon sunlight was peaking through my blinds. My closet doors stood open, my overflowing hamper leaning precariously out towards me. Stacks of books I didn't have room for on my shelves, strewn wherever I'd thought they wouldn't be in the way. A random, lone sock curled up in the middle of the floor, half-way between my sock drawer and the hamper, not clearly clean or dirty. 

And then he was just _there_. Suddenly standing in the middle of my bedroom, looking like an old man, but clearly not. Looking so oddly familiar that I wondered later if he based his appearance on my own mental image of what I thought he ought to look like. 

He didn't say anything as I rose, shakily to my feet, still staring at this clearly impossible man. "Who are you?" I was a little proud of myself that I only sounded a little bit like I was shit-your-pants scared. 

Instead of answering my question the man--who clearly wasn't a man, but what else was I supposed to think of him as--nodded behind me. "What are you reading?"

"What?" I half-turned to look at my book, which was perched precariously on my bed, where I'd probably dropped it. You could clearly see the image of a girl turning into a wolf on the cover. "Uh... Animorphs?" Like a magically appearing being would know what that was. When I looked back at him, still standing there, looking very patient, I thought, well, to be fair, I didn't know what gods or angels or whatever he was supposed to be knew or didn't know.

"I am not an angel," he said. He definitely sounded amused now. "Though, perhaps to your limited viewpoint I could be considered a god."

"Don't--" I started to tell him not to do that--to read my mind--but then I snapped my mouth shut. Maybe _don't_ tell the guy who just told you he was basically a god what to do, Steph. "Okay," I said instead. "Then who  _are_ you?"

"You would know me as the Ellimist."

There are a few ways you can react to this kind of situation. Fear. Awe. Incredulity. Acceptance. It's like the stages of grief, but for finding out everything you know about how the universe works is completely wrong. I was already coming out for the fear stage. It seemed we were skipping right past awe and going straight to incredulity.

"No. No you're not." I shook my head. Maybe I was dreaming. That made the most sense. "The Ellimist isn't real."

He was smiling. I didn't realize until that moment how unsettling a smile could be. "In this universe, not usually, no."

"What does that mean? There's only the one universe." I was definitely dreaming. If I pinched myself, would I wake up, or was that just something that happened in movies?

"There is not. There are many, many other universes. Perhaps infinitely more. Universes much like this one. Universes that are radically different. Universes that exist only as stories here."

"Right. Sure." I gestured around at my bedroom. "What are you doing here, then?"

"The timeline from which I originate is not acting as it should. It is..." he hesitated, as if searching for the right phrase. "Not quite right. It's not happening as it should. Something needs to be changed, to be fixed."

If I'd been thinking straight, I might have realized that there was something very not right about what he was saying. For one thing, it sounded an awful lot like what I'd been thinking for the last couple months--the story was wrong, it shouldn't have ended that way, all of that. To be fair, I guess, that supported the idea that this was a weirdly vivid dream I was having.

Still. I _wasn't_ thinking straight, and I was also, I think, just dumb enough for the Ellimist's purposes, because if I'd had my wits about me, I might have asked the important questions. Like, weren't there rules he was supposed to be following? I didn't fully understand them, but I knew that he couldn't just go around doing whatever he wanted without there being some kind of price. Maybe I should have asked about that.

But, like I said, I was pretty conveniently stupid, so instead I asked, "And, what, you want me to fix it? Is that why you're here? Why not ask someone else?"

The Ellimist raised an eyebrow. "Are you not equipped for the job?"

I straightened a little, almost instinctively. "Of course I am. It's just--" I glanced at my closed bedroom door. There was still no sound coming from outside. But of course there wouldn't have been, would there?

"I would take you there and bring you back as if no time had passed at all." I was still looking at my door, thoughtfully now. "And you'd have the morphing power."

Oh, to hell with it. If this was a dream anyway, I'd probably wake up before anything interesting happened. That's how it always worked. "You know what? Sure--"

And then, suddenly, I wasn't in my room anymore. I wasn't really _anywhere._ It was like someone had turned out the lights on the entire world--the entire universe--and I was suddenly floating in a black, starless space. Floating, floating, and then, just as suddenly, I was falling. Falling, but in what direction? It was all the same. Up, down. Right, left. Falling with no sense of where I was or where I was going, until finally my feet seemed to touch solid ground again and I heard--

**REMEMBER, YOU CANNOT TELL ANYONE OF THE FUTURE.**

"Then how am I--"

And then the blackness was gone just as suddenly as it had arrived, and I was standing inches away from a real, honest to God, Andalite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, GB!Steph doesn't understand quantum mechanics, but she should at least have a pretty good grasp on the concept of making deals with the Devil.


	3. Deja vu

At least he told them I was coming.

"You're staring again," Cassie said.

"Sorry." I couldn't really help it. Still, I turned away from the short, black girl in front of me, trying to ignore the strange sense of deja vu that crept in every time I looked at her. Or any of them. Except Ax, somehow, because I guess my imagination just wasn't as good at conjuring alien centaurs as it was conjuring other humans.

As it was, though, looking anywhere else wasn't much better. We were standing up in the hayloft of the barn--holy hell,  _the actual barn_ \--and I could see the line of cages below. Most of them were occupied. It was mostly dark in the barn, though it wasn't that late, really--maybe half-past nine--and I could see a few pairs of eyes looking back at me. I took a few uneasy steps back from the edge of the loft.

"You're not scared of heights, are you?" Cassie was asking. Her expression seemed sympathetic, at least. I must have looked like a frightened animal to her. Maybe that was why they'd decided to leave me with Cassie for the night. She was the least intimidating person for me to be around until they figured out what to do with me.

Least intimidating. Right.

"I'm fine." I tried to smile. It came out as a grimace.

"Well," Cassie said after a moment, gesturing at the corner of the hayloft where a pillow and blankets had been set up. "It's not much, and you'll have to avoid my dad, but I guess this is the best we can do for now."  _Since we don't know how long you'll be here._ She didn't say it out loud. She didn't really have to.

"It's fine," I said. "There--"  _will be other options later_ is what I started to say. The words were there, ready to be said, but it was like there was suddenly something stuck there, blocking them.  I cleared my throat, started to speak again, and nothing came out. Cassie was looking at me, expectant. I looked away. "Never mind." _That_ , at least, I could say. "Thanks."

This was going to be a problem.

After Cassie left, I sat in the back of the hayloft, as far away from the glowing eyes below as I could get. I pulled the blankets she'd left around myself and pushed myself into a corner, trying desperately to acclimate myself to my new reality. It wasn't really that cold--I was used to colder--but I'd come from the middle of summer. I was still wearing the t-shirt and shorts I'd put on that morning. Whenever "that morning" was. 

It wasn't real yet. 

There was a sore spot above my elbow, where I'd pinched myself over and over again. If I moved the blanket now, I'd be able to see the bruise that was forming from it. I had the sense that I'd just made the stupidest mistake of my life, but it still felt like I was going to wake up any second. I had to, right? Surely I hadn't _actually_   agreed to this. I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing. The Ellimist wasn't helpfully appearing to clue me in on the details of what he expected me to do. Of course he wasn't. God forbid. I felt like that kid who gets left out when everyone pairs up for a class project, when the teacher makes you join an already formed group. You're the odd one out, and you don't want to be there anymore than the others want you. Freaking fantastic.

Still, this was probably the kindest introduction to things that anyone was going to get. That was... something. Sort of.

As I huddled down under my blankets, I realized there was  _one_ definitive way to tell this was all real. I glanced out the hayloft window, towards the house. The lights were out, so I couldn't see anything or anyone. That at least had to mean that no one would see me, right?

Dropping the blankets in a pile by the open window, I stood, on surprisingly shaky legs. I stood there for a few seconds, taking deep breaths, before I started for the ladder. I  _wasn't_ afraid of heights. Mostly. Only a total looney tune would be trying this if they were really afraid of heights.

It wasn't actually completely dark in the barn, now that my eyes had adjusted. Enough to know where I was going, anyway. There, about halfway between the hayloft ladder and the door, was a cage with some kind of raptor inside it. I couldn't tell what kind it was, but that wasn't terribly important to me at the moment. I was just sure it wasn't an owl, which probably meant it wasn't nocturnal. That pretty much exhausted my knowledge of ornithology right there. At any rate, whatever it was, it  _looked_ asleep, and that was good enough for me to feel brave enough to try to get close to that beak. And those talons.

I inched quietly toward the cage, like I was afraid the sick and injured animals around me would sound the alarm if I made too much noise. As I got nearer, I realized my hands were too big to fit through the cage's bars. I stood in front of the bird's cage for  a moment, contemplating the merits of trying to open it instead--or just waiting till morning like the sane person I clearly was not--before reasoning that I could at least  _try_ to reach my fingers through the bars. 

I was just working my hand around the side of the cage when--

<What are you doing?>

"Yaaah!" I jumped back, whirling around. My heart pounded as I looked around, before finally looking up into the rafters. I let out a long breath. "You almost gave me a heart attack."

<Sorry,> Tobias said, though he didn't sound too contrite. <Seriously, though, what are you doing?>

I glanced back at the cage. There wasn't really much reason to lie. "Checking to see if I'm dreaming."

<By trying to get your fingers bitten off?>

"It  _was_ asleep," I grumbled, stepping away from what I could only imagine was a very cranky bird now. "Do you know what it is?"

<You don't know?>

"I don't have every patient the clinic will ever have memorized. I don't know what kind of books you've read, but mine don't usually go that in depth." It was a long moment before Tobias responded to that, giving me just enough time to actually think about what I'd just said. I winced. "Sorry, I--"

<It's a merlin falcon,> he said. <He's been here awhile, actually. I think they're going to release him soon. You only really see merlins this far south in winter.>

"Oh." I glanced back at the bird I would have been acquiring. "So. He probably  _could_ take a couple fingers off, then."

<Easily, yeah.>

"Then I think I'll wait for Cassie." I turned to head back for the hayloft, but stopped, cocking my head to look up at him. "What are _you_ doing, anyway? Don't you have, like, skunk kits or whatever to be babysitting?" 

<Ax has it covered. I was seeing what you were going to do.>

"Ah." That probably shouldn't have surprised me. I started climbing the ladder. "Well, since my plans for the night aren't going to work out, I'm going to bed. Night, Tobias." 

<Night.>

As I settled myself down onto my "bed," I heard, rather than saw, him leave. I sighed. Off to an auspicious start already. As I laid down and tried--and failed--to get comfortable, I reasoned that, if nothing else, I at least knew how to avoid ending up as a rat if they all decided they hated me. Probably.


	4. Non-Existence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In preparation for this chapter, I read an unseemly amount of information on skunks. Exactly none of it made into the chapter.

<Steph? I am here to relieve you.>

 Here is what I had learned thus far.

First, morphing was far weirder than could ever be described. You don't really appreciate the fact that your organs stay more or less in their designated spots most of the time, but when you morph, suddenly everything's moving around inside you. Your organs rearrange themselves, some of them disappear to be replaced by new ones. And that was just what was happening _inside_ of you. 

Demorphing, I guess, was better, if only because at least at the end of it you were in your own body again and the world around you looked and felt like you were accustomed to. The first time you morphed a new animal, the instincts were overwhelming. I'd known this was a thing, I'd been expecting it, but I hadn't realized how awful it would make me feel. For a few awful seconds--or minutes--it would feel like I wasn't in control of myself.

Sometimes, when that feeling passed, it was good. Like flying, which was everything I'd been promised it would be. 

And sometimes the feeling would pass and I'd remember that I was a skunk, in a burrow underground, and it was exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds.

I gratefully slipped out of the skunk burrow to find Ax almost completely morphed already. I saw the last patches of blue fur disappear into black as I began my own change, like an almost seamless passing of the guard. <They're all yours,> I told him. I was already shooting up, away from the ground. I tried not to think too hard about how I could hear my bones grinding.

The second thing I'd learned, was that you could do a lot if you just showed enough confidence.

I told the others that I was going to spend my free non-Yeerk fighting time at the library. There weren't a whole lot of other places I could go during the day, honestly. I couldn't stay in the barn all day because eventually I'd get caught by Cassie's dad. And at least the library was free. If I looked like I belonged there, people would think I _did_ belong. That was the theory, anyway. So far I'd only tested it once. 

When I'd told Jake my plans, he'd looked concerned. Really, I'd only brought it up because of practicality--they needed to be able to find me if something went down--but it was easy enough to guess what his problem with the idea was, even before he said anything. 

"No one's going to notice a kid hanging around in a library," I'd said. "Homeschool kids probably spend the day there _all_ the time. Even if someone notices, they probably won't think it's unusual." Probably. In truth, I had no way of knowing if any of that was true. It _sounded_ true enough. I'd smiled brightly at Jake and said, "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

Jake sighed. "Okay. Just be careful."

"Always."

 I'd never been a big library person. My logic was usually that I liked rereading books too much to worry about finding them a second--or third, or fourth--time at the library. I'd argue that what I could buy with my allowance was plenty. To be honest, though, it was mostly because I was terrible at remembering to return books.

Still, the library was something familiar. It was the land of summer reading programs, school trips and that place my parents would drop me off at during the day so that I wouldn't spend the whole summer sitting around the house--you know, just _most_ of it. Though the library here was less familiar--different structure, different books--it still had reassuring pieces of normalcy. That musty, old book smell. Quiet except for the murmuring of low voices, the tapping of keyboards, the light rumble of carts pushed by librarians and pages.

It was peaceful. It was calming. It was like running into someone you knew when you were on a long trip--just as you're getting homesick, a little slice of home appears. They might not be your best friend--you might not even be close--but the sight of someone you know in a sea of strangers is still like a soothing balm to the system.

This was my second trip to the library. On my first, I'd stashed a bag of clothes around back, behind the dumpster. It was pretty simple--just a long t-shirt and a pair of flip flops--but pulled over my morphing suit, it looked like I was wearing leggings. I had already scoped the place out. I knew where I was going. When I entered, I strode right in, past the front desk, like a girl on a mission. Like I owned the place. No one even looked up.

I used to think the others were unnecessarily paranoid sometimes. Like, who cared if people noticed them hanging out together? But now that I was actually there, I felt that same paranoia creeping into my own brain.

I made my way over to the computer stations and slid into one of the chairs. I stifled the urge to glance around me guiltily--I wasn't doing anything wrong. To the outside observer, there was absolutely nothing strange about what I was doing. I took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, trying to calm the sudden, stupid nerves in my stomach. Don't be stupid. 

I had to create a new e-mail account. It didn't take nearly long enough for the bizarre-o feeling to go away, but soon enough I had an e-mail open, waiting for my message. I stared at it for a long time before I finally decided to just send it blank. She'd probably think it was spam and delete it. It wouldn't even matter. I hit send, then forced myself to get up and leave the computers, instead of anxiously refreshing the page like I desperately wanted to.

I only lasted an hour before I was back, checking my e-mail for something, anything. I didn't expect a response--there was nothing to respond to--but maybe...

Sure enough, there in my inbox was an unread e-mail. The message listed my old address from home, a copy of the e-mail I'd sent, and, in all caps "MESSAGE UNDELIVERABLE."

Really, it didn't necessarily mean that there wasn't another copy of me in this universe. Maybe the Steph in this universe had different interests. Maybe she'd created a different username. I tried again, this time sending the same, blank e-mail to my parents. It was harder to imagine that they would deviate too far from what I was familiar with. It wasn't like them. I hit send, then waited. Almost immediately, the message returned. "MESSAGE UNDELIVERABLE."

* * *

 

The good news--if you could even call it that--was that I didn't have a lot of time to think about the implications of my apparent non-existence in the universe I was stuck in. On the one hand, I didn't legally exist, but on the other, at least I didn't have a doppelganger running around, either. I didn't know anything about universe hopping, but I thought maybe it was like time travel. If you time traveled, you had to try to avoid your past self, or else you might completely alter the timeline. At least that was how it worked in sci-fi. 

There wasn't time to think about all that, though, or to even try to guess at how it all worked. The very next day it would all become very, truly real. A nice dose of battle-shaped reality.

And after that...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GB!Steph's raptor and battle morphs are usually my go-to answers when anyone asks which I'd pick. It's kind of a chicken or the egg kind of thing, though, because those are my answers specifically because their GB!Steph's main morphs. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Going Back came first, because instead of thinking of something original, I specifically picked animals that were mentioned in the books but never morphed.
> 
> This isn't really relevant to this chapter. It's just a factoid that I don't have room for elsewhere.


	5. Pay the Piper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the main purpose of The Impossible Dream is set-up. Establish the overall plot (universe-hopping fangirl saves the world), introduce some important themes (Ellimist is a giant bag of dicks, the Author is bad at writing action scenes and so willfully ignores them, etc.), establish important places in the setting (get used to the library). That's all I really set out to do with this part. For better or for worse, I think I've managed to at least nominally do what I intended. 
> 
> Still. I can't put my finger on it, but it feels like something might be missing. Whatever could it. be.

I dreamed about blood.

I watched it snake through the grass like a river. Red. Blue. Green. I kept thinking that they ought to mix together, like paint, changing their color. Red and blue to purple. Purple and green to... what? Brown? But they stayed separate, never mixing, even when they overlapped. I stood, human, staring down at it, not knowing what to make of it. Wanting to touch it. Afraid to. I took a step backwards, and then I heard a sound from behind me. Turning, I saw the leopard crouch. I tried to scream, but my lips wouldn't move. I watched, almost in slow motion, as its muscles unfurled, as it made to pounce, and then--

I sat bolt upright. My heart beat wildly in my chest for a panicked moment until I realized where I was. I was in the barn. I was okay. I was safe. Well. Relatively speaking. Groaning, I fell back against my pillow, staring up at the ceiling. It was still dark. I couldn't begin to guess what time it was. The animals below were oddly quiet. There was nothing to distract me. I  _should_ go back to sleep. I had no way of knowing how much longer I had. Still, every time I closed my eyes, they were there. Hork-Bajir. Humans. I'd hear screaming and feel the pain of flesh tearing and--

I was still awake when Cassie finally climbed the ladder, bearing breakfast.

"My dad's going to be out most of the day," Cassie told me as she handed over this morning's rations--a granola bar and an orange juice box. "So, you can hang around here, if you want. 

"Thanks." I didn't look at her as I started carefully peeling away the wrapper on my granola bar. I thought she was waiting for me to say something. Maybe she wanted to help me process things. Maybe it would have helped. "I think I'm going to try to sleep more. I didn't get much last night."

"Okay." She said something else, but I didn't really hear her, and then she was climbing down the ladder again and a minute later she was gone.

I did actually try to sleep. I thought that maybe it'd be easier in the light of day--everything was scarier at night, even when your entire life has suddenly shifted into a nightmare. I'd had a pretty easy introduction so far, but one thing was becoming really obvious, really fast.

I was a complete, fucking idiot.

Eventually, I decided trying to sleep more was useless. Instead, I morphed and headed for town.

I didn’t head anywhere in particular at first, instead trying to enjoy myself while I rode the thermals. It was the best sort of day for flying. Warm air billowed up beneath my wings, lifting me higher and higher with barely a flap.

I flew lazily, without direction for awhile. Morph therapy, I thought, was really a thing I could get behind. As the morphing clock ticked down, I almost didn’t want to demorph. When I was human it was too easy to think only about the night before. The battle. The horror.

With a sigh, I turned towards the library. It was becoming part of my routine. At least there I might find something to distract me.

Sometimes I think back to those last few minutes of freedom. I might have enjoyed it more if I’d known what was waiting for me. I might have turned back.

Nothing in town took more than a few minutes to fly between, which was nice, I suppose. Somehow everything was smaller than I’d expected. I wondered if the differences were because of my own faulty imagination, or if the descriptions had just been intentionally vague.

I passed over the high school as I flew. From down below, I could hear the bell ring, signaling the end of another class. Like my own personal warning bell, even if I didn’t know that yet.

I circled above the library, scanning the ground for people who might pass by and see me if I landed and demorphed. It was hard to focus. The sun, I thought, glaring off the pavement. My eyes kept drifting away to avoid the glare.

Finally, I dropped into a dive, landing in the alley behind the library, where the dumpster was. I had a bag of clothes stashed there, just a long t-shirt and a pair of flip-flops that I could throw on over my leotard. Still a falcon, I hopped around the dumpster to make sure my bag was still where I’d left it. Satisfied, I started to demorph.

I  _ should  _ have heard him. But then again, I wasn’t used to the falcon’s hearing yet. There were plenty of noises all happening at once around me, I wasn’t practiced enough yet to sort through them and hone in on which were important.

That’s what I convinced myself happened, anyway.

I didn’t hear him until I was half-demorphed. I was still covered in feathers, and my feet were still mostly talons, but my head had resumed its natural shape. As my claws split into toes, I heard something behind me. Turning instinctively, I had only time to make out a man’s shape before he grabbed me.

“No!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, there it is.
> 
> (It's the only place I have for a cliffhanger ending, forgive me.)


End file.
